


An Angel Bright Betwixt

by depressaria



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angels, Apocalypse, Community: tic_tac_woe, Depowered Anna, F/F, Loss of Grace, Loss of Powers, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-30
Updated: 2017-04-30
Packaged: 2018-10-25 14:04:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10765752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/depressaria/pseuds/depressaria
Summary: She didn’t need to go down that ruminative path to know that she could never really trust an angel. Angels were demons’ natural enemies, with meandering, unpredictable loyalties and motivations that were totally at odds with a demon’s straightforward drives, which were often more honest and human than actual humans’ motivations. At least you could trust a demon to look out for their own interests.Season 4 AU. Lilith’s plan goes off the rails and Lucifer isn’t freed. Instead, rates of vampirism rise to epidemic levels. Both considered defectors by their respective factions, Anna and Ruby team up in hopes of surviving a world overrun by increasingly desperate vampires.





	An Angel Bright Betwixt

**Author's Note:**

> For the "Vampires" square in my tic_tac_woe bingo card. As this bingo challenge is about writing different kinds of apocalyptic threats, this fic contains violence, horror, gore, etc. In this case, it’s all fairly canon typical, but YMMV. Title taken from Paradise Lost, of course

Ruby’s back hit the battered floor of the chapel hard, knocking the breath out of her and making her bite her lip. It wasn’t the worst thing that could have happened when she stumbled and left herself open for the vampire’s attack, but it was also far from the best; she was off-balance and in need of a few moments to recover, and the smell of the blood filling her mouth was likely to drive the vampire into a frenzy and make it even harder to overpower. 

She spat her mouthful of blood to the side, hoping to distract the vampire momentarily, but before she could roll away or kick him in the balls, his blood showered her and his head dropped into her lap unceremoniously. 

Anna was standing behind where the vampire had been standing, cleaning off a sword. Her expression was disinterested in a highly practiced way, but Ruby didn’t get to be where she was by taking things at face value. Whatever half-baked apocalypse that had been unleashed on the world when Lilith’s plan to free Lucifer went down the tubes had clearly affected Anna as much as it had Ruby. 

“You could have warned me,” Ruby said. “Now I’m going to stink of vampire for the next month.” 

“I didn’t want to risk missing,” Anna said. She held out her hand to Ruby. Ruby took it, and let Anna haul her to her feet.

“So what are you doing here?” Ruby asked. “I figured you’d go back home, now that you’ve…” 

“Now that I have my grace back and the world’s gone to shit?” She smiled wryly. “Believe it or not, heaven’s not such a great place to live these days either. Even if I wanted to go back, my siblings wouldn’t exactly welcome me with open arms.” 

Ruby shrugged. “I can relate.” 

They stood there in awkward silence for a few moments, neither apparently certain how to politely part ways. 

Finally, Ruby heaved a deep sigh. “Well, it’s been great catching up, but I should head out.” 

But when she turned to leave, Anna’s hand shot out to grab onto her arm. 

“I was thinking,” Anna said. “We should work together.” It came out in one slightly-breathless jumble, like she’d had to psych herself up to say it because she was embarrassed or something. Which was a weird thing to think about an angel, but sometimes she had to call them as she saw them. And Anna had been human once, just like Ruby had been human once, except she became not-human through regaining her literally God-given celestial superpowers and Ruby had become not-human through having her soul worn away with a cheese grater over the course of several centuries of unimaginable torture. Not that she was bitter or anything.

“Might be useful to have an angel watching my back,” Ruby said, trying to sound noncommittal. It actually really would be useful, but she’d seen enough shit in her life to not know, deep in her gut, that there was a catch. 

Anna’s carefully neutral expression broke into a smile—almost the same as that big, sort of dorky grin she’d worn back in that cabin when she’d said Ruby wasn’t like other demons, before either of them knew what Anna was. 

She’d been right, of course, though she probably didn’t know exactly how right. Ruby _wasn’t_ like other demons, but it wasn’t because she was a _nice_ demon. There’d had been (and always would be) plenty who defected, who decided they were better than what Hell had taught them to be, who decided to try and atone by making nice with the humans and rescuing kittens from trees. In truth, Ruby was different because she was more loyal—she loved Lilith as much as Lilith loved herself, which was saying something, when you’re a species whose fatal flaw is arrogance and vanity. 

But then again, maybe she knew more than Ruby suspected. Angels could be pretty vain and arrogant, themselves, and Anna had been human once. Had wanted more than anything to be human, actually, as far as Ruby was aware, and had become an angel again only to avoid being tortured for the rest of eternity by one side or the other. 

It was an unnecessary train of thought; she didn’t need to go down that ruminative path to know that she could never really trust an angel. Angels were demons’ natural enemies, with meandering, unpredictable loyalties and motivations that were totally at odds with a demon’s straightforward drives, which were often more honest and human than actual humans’ motivations. At least you could trust a demon to look out for their own interests.

It would still be nice to have someone at her back, even if it was just temporary. 

~*~*~*~

They decided that the logical place to start would be discovering what exactly had caused this shit, because this wasn’t the apocalypse either of their superiors had predicted. Every demon who might be able to help thought Ruby a traitor, and every angel who could help thought Anna a traitor and Ruby an abomination, so they had to start from scratch, like a couple of humans not even a century old. It was kind of sad, really. 

So they stayed on the move, Anna transporting them to the next town when they needed to leave their current one, and sought out places where they could find potentially helpful texts.

Of course, they also cleared out vampire nests whenever they had the opportunity to, because angel blood and demon blood were like crack to vampires, and it was in their best interest to limit their spread whenever possible. 

The first rough patch happened when they were investigating a house that clearly had either belonged to a hunter or to someone who was terminally goth; silver, sigils, occult texts, and obscure ingredients were stashed everywhere. They were so absorbed in the books that they didn’t notice a pack of vamps had taken up residence in the basement, and they ended up getting a little cornered. 

Except Anna just clapped her hands over Ruby’s eyes and the room burst into light so bright that it hurt her eyes a bit even through Anna’s hands, and a few heartbeats later, Anna pulled her hands away and the vampires had been reduced to neat piles of ash. 

She half-expected her eyes to be bleeding, and said as much, but Anna didn’t even smile before sinking down onto a tattered armchair and opening up the book she’d been perusing before the attack.

Ruby waited a few breaths, then asked, “Shouldn’t we get going now?”

“I’ll transport us somewhere safe in a few hours,” Anna said without looking up. 

“How about now? The sun’s not getting any higher, they probably had friends, and whatever you did was kind of awesome, but I don’t want to tempt fate by getting cornered again.” 

“It takes a lot out of me, okay?” Admitting it seemed to have taken more out of her. “And we might as well finish checking out these books while we’re here; we fought for them.” 

“Didn’t think you guys could get tired out, honestly.” 

“Why would anyone want to give their enemies any information about their limitations?” Anna snapped—actually snapped. It was kind of startling.

Ruby kept her expression neutral with some effort, shrugged, and grabbed another book off the shelf, figuring that research was much more advantageous than continuing to dig and possibly starting a real argument.

~*~*~*~

They’d just gotten done taking out a pack of vamps when Ruby noticed it. 

Anna’s nose was bleeding.

“Hey,” Ruby said, trying to sound casual. “One of them wing you?” She gestured at her own nose and Anna reached up to dab experimentally under her nose. She frowned when she saw the blood on her fingertips. It was a small frown, just a little line between her eyes, her face otherwise carefully disinterested.

“Must have,” she said, smiling a bit wanly. “It’s been that kind of night.”

“Yeah,” Ruby said. She could feel her eyebrows shooting up and thought, absurdly, that if she were a cartoon character they’d be hovering a few inches above her head. “Yeah, I guess it has. Anything you want to share with the class?” 

Anna smiled more genuinely, then. Not a big dorky _shesavedmylife_ kind of smile, but still real and still kind of adorable. “Not particularly,” she said. “There were a lot of them, Ruby. It’s really not all that surprising.” 

She wasn’t being at all convincing, but Ruby decided to drop the issue for the time being. “Yeah, sure,” she said. “We should get moving before more of them show up.” 

A little too quickly, Anna reached out and put a hand on her shoulder, and in a blink they were somewhere else.

~*~*~*~

It happened again in a small town a few weeks later. Anna had just finished transporting them there, and when they popped back into existence Anna was bent over like she was trying not to pass out, her hands braced against her legs, blood dripping steadily onto the concrete.

“Okay, what the fuck,” Ruby said, eloquently. 

Anna stood up straight at that, eyes wide and hair wild, wiping at the blood on her face with a trembling hand. “It happens sometimes,” she said, slightly breathlessly. “Someone must have put up wards somewhere in this town and when I tried to land us I accidentally hit one and it bounced us off.”

“Well, I feel fine, and anyone who knows how to make anti-angel wards has gotta be savvy enough to put up anti-demon wards as well.”

“You weren’t the one driving.” She wiped off her face again. “Just give me a minute.”

She was clearly just making shit up, but Ruby didn’t know enough about angel crap to call her out. She let it drop, and, true to her word, Anna was good to go a minute later, and seemed capable of decapitating her fair share of the town’s vampire population. 

~*~*~*~

She wanted to be certain before she accused her of anything, since for all she knew, all that weirdness was completely normal for an angel, but it wasn’t long before she felt sure enough to say something. They were checking out an empty town for salvage—dead man’s blood, silver, salt, whatever else they could find that might ward off creepy crawlies—and Ruby was trailing behind Anna a little, watching her as she strode purposefully through the wrecked morgue. She had her hair pulled back from her dirt-smeared, somewhat pinched-looking face, and her clothes were starting to look dingy, and it occurred to Ruby that this was the most she’d seen an angel change. Even having her human body disintegrated by her grace hadn’t stopped Anna from turning up later looking like nothing had happened.

“You’re losing it, aren’t you?” Ruby asked. Her voice sounded too loud in the oppressive quiet of the morgue, but Anna didn’t seem startled by it. 

“Losing what, Ruby?” Anna asked without turning to face her, her voice carefully neutral. 

“Your mojo. Your grace. Your powers. You know, your ability to defend yourself from the world full of monsters that would just love to keep you trussed up and use you as an angelic blood dispenser for the rest of your life?” 

Anna turned then, a slightly watery smile on her face. “It’s not a big deal, you know. It’s what I always wanted, right? I’ll be human, and with heaven closed off, I won’t have to worry about them coming after me.” 

“It’s a big deal if it means you end up vampire chow. Or if I end up vampire chow trying to protect you, once you’re so human you turn into dead weight.” 

Anna didn’t respond, instead pulling open one of the drawers. “This one’s relatively fresh. Should be able to get a decent amount from him.”

“This isn’t going to go away if you ignore me. You need to tell me how much longer I can expect you to have my back.” When Anna didn’t respond and just started extracting blood from the cadaver, Ruby huffed a mirthless laugh. “You knew from the beginning, didn’t you? You knew this was going to happen, and that’s why you came to me. You needed someone around who’d protect you when you got useless.” 

Anna’s back stiffened and she looked determinedly at the cadaver instead of Ruby. “You’re the only one I knew I could trust,” she said quietly.

Ruby’s stomach slowly tied itself into one giant knot. 

“Is there anything we can do to slow it down? Or stop it?” 

“Short of returning to heaven, no. If I limit usage of my abilities, I may have access to them longer, but what would be the point? I’m going to lose them regardless; might as well use them while I’ve got them.” Her jaw tightened. “I don’t know what exactly will happen when my grace is fully depleted. Most likely I’ll be like I was when we met, except with my memories intact; able to hear my siblings’ conversations, and maybe capable of tapping into certain abilities in times of great stress.” 

“So you’ll be vampire bait, and barely more capable to fend them off than a human,” Ruby said flatly. 

She didn’t know why she was getting so angry. It wasn’t just being lied to—she was used to and expected that, and had no room to judge besides—but also the loss. And maybe a little concern, too. Fuck if she knew why, but she’d gotten attached, and if Anna got herself killed now, after they’d spent however long fighting together, it would… it wouldn’t destroy her, really, but it also wouldn’t be a good feeling.

“I’m sorry I lied,” Anna said. “I’d understand if you wanted to part ways.” 

What finally tipped her from anger into concern was how resigned Anna was—so certain that Ruby would dump her ass the second she threatened to become a burden, and maybe even convinced that Ruby would be right to do so. Which, well, she really _should_ dump her ass the second she became a burden, if she wanted to have a Winchester’s chance of not becoming an alcoholic to survive, but…

“You know what,” Ruby told her, trying to sound more flippant than she felt. “I’ve saved your ass this many times already, so what the hell, right? I’m better off protecting my investment.” 

~*~*~*~

The days had become, at first, almost fun. Had made her almost think she understood why the Winchesters were so disgustingly codependent; even for a demon, hunting alone was too quiet and animal. It could consume you if you didn’t have a distraction, turn you into something lower than the things you fought, and while distractions had been plentiful while she was playing the long con with poor dumb Sam—keeping Lilith in the loop, nudging the chess pieces to get the seals open that much faster, dodging all the sad sacks who didn’t realize she was on their side more than they were on their side—in the new world there was nothing else but fighting. 

Even daylight wasn’t safe once the remaining humans wised up and the vampires had to get braver about facing the sun. It was pretty much impossible to let your guard down unless you had yourself a good hiding spot, and even then they’d track you down eventually, especially if you happened to be someone particularly tasty, like a demon. And even if there was no chance of being found, Ruby wasn’t one to hide in a bunker and wait for it all to be over. 

But having Anna at her back had changed that. It was almost disturbing how quickly she’d gotten used to her presence, had come even to trust in and depend on her. And maybe even care for her, as much as she could care about anyone. It was like some bad romance novel purchased in the bargain bin at a drugstore, or a low-budget fantasy film broadcast at 2:00pm on a weekday on the sci-fi channel.

She reasoned that it wasn’t _that_ weird to grow acclimated to Anna’s presence. She was handy in a fight, and getting her grace back hadn’t made her as sanctimonious as the other angels Ruby had had the misfortunate of meeting. It was pretty comforting to know that, if they were ever cornered badly, Anna could just teleport them away. 

Anna had said she _trusted_ Ruby.

It was different than stringing Sam along. She actually cared about Anna. Which… was not ideal. Catching feelings was probably the stupidest thing she could do while trying to survive the wrong apocalypse, but she couldn’t make herself let go of them, because caring for Anna made the whole shitty situation feel slightly more bearable. 

And even though the reason why she’d liked Anna was because she felt safer with her on her side, it felt like she liked her more when she was losing her powers. 

It was fucked up and just a bit too human.

Which was fitting, she guessed, because that was how Anna was going to end up when her powers finally fizzled out completely and Ruby couldn’t defend the both of them any longer. 

~*~*~*~

Ruby obviously didn’t require sleep, and Anna didn’t at first, but as her grace deteriorated, she started needing to again. 

It was risky, to stay in one place for several hours a day while one of them was unconscious, but Ruby found herself beginning to enjoy the few hours of sleep Anna got each day. Tense though they were, it was sometimes nice to see her at peace, even if just for a few hours, and to wonder what she dreamed about. Human dreams were tiresome and predictable, with tiresome and predictable interpretations: essentially every remembered nightmare was related somehow to fear of losing control. She thought maybe Anna’s would be different, but whenever she asked, Anna would claim to never remember dreaming. Maybe angels didn’t dream.

She wasn’t looking forwards to when Anna would have to eat again, though. The apocalypse probably put all the deep fryers of the world out of commission. 

On a couple of occasions, when she felt reasonably certain that there were no vampires in the immediate vicinity, she’d lie down on the bed herself—on the edge, so as not to raise any personal space issues—and doze as much as a demon can doze, watching the fading sunlight through the window and wondering at how much stress sleep wiped off of Anna’s face. If it weren’t for her grimy hair and bloody clothes, or the musty bedding the house’s occupants had left to rot when they jumped ship or were taken by vamps, it would have been easy to convince herself that they weren’t in an apocalypse after all. 

It was on one such occasion—the two of them resting in the master bedroom of a moldering two-story in a blood-spattered suburb, Ruby half-dozing on the edge of the bed and Anna sleeping—that the spell was broken by Anna waking up screaming. 

Automatically, Ruby clapped her hand over Anna’s mouth, terrified that her screaming would draw in vampires, but her efforts to get Anna to fully wake up and stop screaming tapered off when she saw that bloodstains were spreading on the back of Anna’s shirt. Almost like something had been ripped off of her shoulder blades.

Anna _wasn’t waking up_ , just shrieking like someone was chopping her up with an axe, and Ruby was starting to panic; she had one hand clamped over Anna’s mouth to muffle her screams and one hand on her shoulder, shaking her. She was actually _straddling_ her to keep her grip from being bucked off, and she’d thought about the two of them being this close but this was such a perversion of those thoughts that it made her feel sick to her stomach. 

Then, finally, Anna’s screams died off and her eyes fluttered open.

Ruby clambered off of her, and when she was reasonably certain that she was fully awake, asked, “What the fuck just happened?”

Anna gingerly reached back to feel the bloodstains on her back. The dark circles under her suspiciously bright eyes seemed to deepen when she looked at the blood on her fingers, but her voice was steady when she spoke. “I won’t be able to transport us anymore,” she said. “I’m sorry.” 

“So, what, your wings just disappeared?”

“I no longer have enough grace to sustain them.”

“I thought they’d just… get reabsorbed or something. I didn’t think it would be like someone hacked them off with a butter knife.” 

“If I thought it would happen like this, I would’ve warned you.” 

Ruby cut her off before she could apologize again. “It’s not a big deal, Anna. I mean, I hate that you’re hurting, but you gave me fair warning that you’d be getting depowered.” She just didn’t expect that it would be quite so dramatic, but she figured that part was implied without rubbing salt in the wound by actually saying it. And she didn’t realize until after she said it that she was going to tell Anna that she didn’t like to see her in pain. Fuck.

“We should leave soon,” Anna said. “Every vampire in the state probably knows where we are now, and the sun will be down soon.” 

Except when she sat up and swung her legs out of the bed, she winced and sort of sat there stiffly and awkwardly, slightly curled in on herself, clearly waiting for the strength to stand, and Ruby hopped off the bed before she could get any further.

“Just wait there for a second,” Ruby said. “It won’t matter where we go if you walk around with all that blood on you. I’ll go see if I can find a new shirt for you.” 

She found antibiotic ointment and bandaids in the bathroom medicine cabinet, and a vintage Charlie’s Angels t-shirt in the walk-in closet, which was possibly in poor taste, but fuck it. She was still a demon, wasn’t she? Then she insisted that Anna let her take a look at her back before anything else, but there weren’t actually any injuries on her back under the blood. 

“Cosmological trauma doesn’t leave physical wounds,” Anna said when Ruby shot her a questioning look. 

But she let Ruby mop up the blood, and thanked her for the gesture, and laughed a little when Ruby showed her the shirt she’d found for her.

~*~*~*~

They were scrounging for salt in the kitchen of a trashed diner when the jukebox blared to life, startling the both of them badly enough of that one of them—Ruby wasn’t sure who, and wasn’t sure it mattered—knocked a plate to the floor.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Ruby asked. It was too early in the day for most vampires to bother venturing out; the mid-morning sun was bright enough to sting like a motherfucker, so whoever it was was either desperate and stupid with hunger or just plain crazy. Either way, it was not how she’d wanted to start the day.

“We need to leave now,” Anna said, face pale and mouth pressed tight, already cramming their belongings back into her backpack. 

“Yeah, no shit,” Ruby said, tossing one last half-full shaker of salt over to Anna before standing up from the booth and—

—immediately hitting the ground hard, vision blurring and pain lancing through her head. 

She could hear Anna calling her name, but then one of the vampires slammed the door to the freezer shut, and all she heard, as she was hauled off the ground and thrown over someone’s shoulder like a sack of potatoes, was the stupid jukebox.

~*~*~*~

A tap on the head wouldn’t normally be a problem, but they’d gotten her pretty good, and by the time she woke up, they’d tied her to a chair that was sitting on a devil's trap and surrounded by a ring of salt. So she was pretty much screwed.

She started to try and fish out her knife, but before she could get anywhere with it, a vampire who she figured was the leader snatched it out of her hand. Asshole. 

So she was in and out, until finally she woke not to a vamp chewing on her arm, but to Anna’s hands on her face.

Anna was saying something, her eyes too wide and her hair looking extremely red. It took a few moments before Ruby realized she was saying her name and asking if she was okay.

“Do I look okay, Emmanuelle Béart?” It came out hoarse and groggy, but sarcastic enough for government work, she supposed.

Anna broke into a relieved, slightly watery smile. “I was so worried I’d be too late,” she said. Seemingly reassured, she pulled her hands away from Ruby’s face and started unlocking the cuffs. “It took way too long to get out of that freezer, and then—well, I guess it doesn’t matter now.” 

She stood up, and Ruby noticed that her mouth and chin were caked in blood from a nosebleed. Like, a lot of blood. Her hands were coated in it, her boots were splattered with it, her hair was stringy with it.The stupid Charlie’s Angels shirt was pretty much soaked in it—though of course, the lion’s share of the blood probably didn’t belong to Anna—and in any other context she might have a joke ready about wet t-shirt contests. What actually came out was, “What did you do?” 

She wiped her hands on her jeans, to little effect, and smiled wryly. “Whatever it took,” she said. 

Ruby stood, then, on legs that were only slightly wobbly, and surveyed the carnage. The room she was in was mostly clear of the results of Anna’s little smiting spree, except for the vamp she’d figured was the leader, the one who took her knife. He was lying on the floor a few feet away, and he was still alive. Anna seemed to have cut his throat so deeply that it almost decapitated him, and he couldn’t move without finishing the job and killing himself. He was trying to speak through his ruined trachea, but mostly just gagging on his own blood. Blood belched up from the gaping cut on his throat, which heaved with each ragged breath, making it look like something grinning and sapient, more alive than his waxen face with its labored movements and its mouth full of jagged, animal teeth.

Ruby pulled her knife from his waistband and put him out of his misery.

~*~*~*~

Anna bundled her into a car that was waiting in the parking lot outside, and pulled onto the interstate.

The ride was quiet; not as in uneventful, though nothing much happened, but literally quiet. The roads were empty, all the radio stations were static, and though the car had a functioning CD player, the the car's previous owner seemed to have had a fondness for the worst sort of pop music, and the two of them unceremoniously agreed to toss the albums out of the car window.

Ruby rode shotgun, occasionally bumping Anna’s elbow with her own as they silently vied for armrest space. Their forearms had matching bite marks.

After dawn arrived, they pulled over at a rest stop and changed clothes, burning the bloodied ones. She was kind of sad to see the stupid Charlie’s Angels shirt go; the next town they stopped in, she’d have to find another ironic shirt at the nearest opportunity. 

Anna washed the worst of the blood off in the rest stop’s bathroom, and when she came out she looked sort of like a drowned rat, with her hair dripping onto her jacket and her face looking pale and… not old, exactly, but careworn. Not that Ruby had much room to talk; at this point her meatsuit was more resilient than Anna’s, but that didn’t mean it didn’t take a lot out of her when a nest of vamps decided to make her their personal soda fountain.

“You’re healing slow,” Anna remarked as they sat at a battered picnic table watching the flames die down. 

Ruby started to say that it wasn’t a big deal, but before she could open her mouth Anna was reaching across the table to trail her hand gently along the side of Ruby’s head, fingers tangling a little in her still-wet hair, where the gash where the vamps got her was still oozing slightly. 

Nothing happened, except that Anna’s nose started bleeding again and her face went a queasy sort of gray. 

More alarmed than she would ever like to admit, Ruby grabbed her hand and pulled it away from her head. “Don’t give yourself an aneurysm over it. It’s not a big deal.” She’d meant to drop Anna’s hand once she’d pulled it away, but found herself still holding onto it loosely. 

“I just feel a little useless,” Anna said, smiling a little bitterly. “I gave up everything to be human, and now that it seems I am, for good, I can’t stop thinking about how much easier things would be if I’d never fallen.” 

“It’s just pre-mortality jitters,” Ruby said, in a tone she hoped was flippant. “Though I suppose this wasn’t the humanity you hacked out your grace for. I haven’t seen a star-crossed couple or apple pie in weeks.” 

“No, that doesn’t bother me. I wanted this, for better or for worse.” She straightened in her seat, pulling her hand out of Ruby’s grasp in order to mop the blood off her face. “Too late to go back now, anyways.” 

“Well, it’s been a second since I’ve been one, but I think regret is a pretty integral part of the human experience. They never know how good they’ve got it, always wish they could go back and do it over, and have a compulsive need for more than what they already have.”

Anna smiled for real, then, and said, “I didn’t think of it that way, but I think you might be right.”

There was still a bit of blood drying under her nose. Ruby leaned across the table and wiped it away with her thumb.

~*~*~*~

It wasn’t really safe, but Ruby felt like she was gonna crack if she didn’t get a break and Anna seemed to be walking a fine line herself, so the next town they stopped in, they headed to a diner that was still in usable condition. 

A little messing around with a generator, a little scavenging, and they had the kitchen working enough to make a date of it. 

Ruby baked a chocolate cake from a stale box of cake mix, and Anna made unsalted fries from some slightly sad looking potatoes they’d found in someone’s root cellar. The fries were soggy and the cake underdone, and there was no ignoring the eerie quiet of town or dinginess of the abandoned diner, but for a few hours it didn’t seem to matter.

And later, when Anna leaned in to kiss her, obscene and decidedly earthly, and Ruby’s hand slid under Anna’s shirt to feel the soft skin of her shoulders where, in another life, enormous wings used to grow, nothing at all mattered.


End file.
